Where Wild Things Are Cable Tv Show Captures Nature As It Unfolds In Our Own Back Yard.

April 10, 1993|By NEIL SANTANIELLO, Staff Writer

Last fall, when Palm Beach County`s Naturescope cable television show started production, the film crew hit a snag.

The cameras could only venture as far into the wild as their extension cords permitted.

``For the first show, we were connected to house current,`` recalled Steve Bass, manager of the Okeeheelee Nature Center and narrator of Naturescope, which airs along with other county-produced government and education programs on cable television Channel 20.

But the cable crew severed that umbilical chord with civilization in January, when the county acquired a $142,000 television production truck to do remote filming.

Last week, the Naturescope crew and production truck trekked to a corner of the isolated Loxahatchee Slough, a 5,200-acre wetland in northwestern Palm Beach County, to film the show`s fourth episode with 11 Limestone Creek Elementary School students.

Standing ankle-deep in muddy marsh water, Bass waited for two video cameras positioned on a dock to roll. When they did, he opened the show by explaining the ecological importance of the slough, a crucial water storage area and headwaters to Florida`s only federally designated wild and scenic river.

``This is part of a great interior wetland that once ran the length of Palm Beach County,`` Bass said to the cameras. ``Parts of it are still intact.``

Inside the production truck parked near the slough`s bank, Susan Chadburn, Naturescope`s producer-director, watched the filming on mini-television monitors and gave directions to camera operators through a radio-headset.

The idea for a locally produced nature show came from Chadburn, who then recruited Bass to narrate it. Formerly the director of the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, Bass brims with knowledge about South Florida`s flora and fauna.

During one taping segment, Bass not only identified wetland plants, but offered interesting sidelights to each.

Willow bark was ``the first source of aspirin,`` he said.

Pointing to pickerel weeds, he noted that the plant ``has a beautiful blue flower that some people like to pick and put in salads.`` The fuzzy heads of cattails, ``a sign of ecological trouble`` in a swamp, can hold a million seeds or more, he said.

One Naturescope show per month is produced. Each installment airs three times a week on Channel 20, which broadcasts government meetings, public service announcements and educational shows.

Bass said he never writes scripts for the Naturescope episodes, but lets them unfold naturally.

``We just kind of wing it a little bit,`` said Bass, who equates them to televised nature field trips.

The first show, filmed at Coral Cove Park in Jupiter, focused on beachcombing. The second show, recorded at the Okeeheelee Nature Center on Forest Hill Boulevard just east of Florida`s Turnpike, delved into shellrock mining pits and mitigation ponds. The crew then returned to Coral Cove Park and zeroed in on the Intracoastal Waterway for a third show on salt water grass flats.

For the Loxahatchee Slough episode, Bass invited the Limestone Creek students -- all third-graders -- to comb the edge of the marsh with pole nets to trap tadpoles, crayfish, water bugs and other tiny aquatic creatures for an on-camera question-and-answer session.

The Naturescope crew will turn its cameras next on butterflies at the Okeeheelee Nature Center, and on a guest host, Carmen Berrows-MacDougall, head of The Butterfly Project in Palm Beach Gardens.

Because Palm Beach County has several nature centers, lots of coastline and large chunks of wilderness areas left to explore, Bass does not expect to run out of filming sites -- or topics -- soon.